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The side effect of not undocking due to a somewhat laggy hotel internet connection and a lack of a headset to join in on fleets is that I can write a blog post or two a day instead. There is a lot that is bubbling up from Fanfest.

Vov and Detta have been having these intense, technical discussions about tags 4 sec and their potential usefulness. I'm the simple minded one that finally said, "We know nothing about their spawn rates you are just making guesses." This is probably why they are good at intense technical game mechanics and I am not. The perception of a min/maxer is not one that I can or do automatically understand. Optimization for the sake of optimization rarely appeals to me.

The discussion dove into what makes something worth doing in different types of space. PvE in low sec is not much better then PvE in high sec. While CCP may not be walking along the path of inherent steps of space, Low Sec is more dangerous then high sec. Currently, low sec, outside of F…

It is my last day and I suspect I'll stop writing about Iceland and get back to writing about Eve. The other night, at dinner, I was sat by the window. The window is drafty. They always seem to be. The place is cold, I will give it that. But, the view was nice until a random ma knocked on the window, rubbed his face and lips against it, gave me the peace sign and kept going. It was amusing but it was also WTF. The other table in the restaurant was occupied by a group of Eve players. I will miss the chatter about the game that I would catch as I walked around the town.

I won't miss the random snow storms when I am standing on a cold beach with my hair still soaking wet from the blue lagoon with cold wind ripping off of the Atlantic and shredding through my inadequate spring time North American idea of a jacket.

The day started off with my husband convincing me to get out of the bed. I have been out and about more this last week then…

I'm still in Iceland for another day. Meet the "come at me Bro" puffin with a lovely green backdrop provided by my husband's shirt. This puffin is coming home with us.

As I understand crime as defined, destruction of property is considered a crime. Destruction can be defacement and under defacement one can easily slot spray painting.

I have seen more of Iceland at night then during the day. This day was the first day after Fanfest. I have another day after this one and I head home the following afternoon. This is the first time that I slept in. I managed to acquire almost a full mornings sleep after I finished my last, endless ramble around four in the morning under the brightness of a freshly risen sun.

The task of finding food led us down a wind swept street and to a small, corner ship where my husband first acquired a beer our first night in.

We had been trying to figure out where the food was in this establishment and eventually, we …

The first thing that I heard when I got to the hall was from a friendly member of goonswarm discussing the Rumor that 'isotopes are being removed from the ice belts and we will hear more at the Keynote". So, complete Rumor but the other story I read later was that Ice was being removed from high sec as well. We will see what we find out. The above is 100% rumor at the time I am writing the blog.

I first attended the Retribution Roundup. It was an overview of what Retribution meant. I can see how it is not interesting or exciting but ignoring what was for what will be isn't the best idea in my mind. I also liked Retribution a lot so decided to try to take some notes and see how it went. It was hosted by CCP Soloman who I felt was a very good presenter interesting and engaging. His obvious passion for being a project manager showed through. Especially when he showed us project manager books and how richly engaging they were.

I am mildly overstating. I did stock heavily last Tuesday and I did do a rig restock a few days ago. It has also not been an entire week.

However, my store is in a shambles. Someone else is stocking hybrid and projectile ammunition at the moment. Lots of stuff is gone but because I have around 450 buy orders active right now figuring out what is gone is a lot harder then I expected without my tools.

Little things like screen setup matters. With only one screen on my laptop there is a lot of back and forth tabbing between various accounts. I have become more proficient at using Eve Mentat as a fast sorting restocking list then I realized.

I've been trying to get some of it done. I was a bit too frustrated to deal with it until I saw someone I know purchase all of my liquid ozone and relist it double the price. The market for ice materials has been insane with the announcement to the changes in ice mining. Like the American Oil companies, the value of what is already there doubles t…

I was pessimistic about my game future on Friday night. I was excited about Tags 4 Sec but terribly worried about the overall future for Low Sec. Rumors, murmurs holes in knowledge and guesses were painting me a positive picture for Eve and a bleak picture for myself. Those two things are not the same. Eve can be wildly successful while the things I love fade out and change. I was worried.

Looking back upon the day, before I comment on the day, I will say that I learned what worries me the most. The size of small gangs in the inhabitalness of low sec is a major worry of mine. Social game play is a major focus and massive scope is a major focus. Small gangs can give social game play but we can not give greater scope. In a discussion I will detail further down I realized that I was repeating a concern I had not fully voiced or realized to myself.

I am worried for the residents of low sec because of their small size. Nothing stops larger forces from coming and wiping us out except for …

These are some stats I snapped pictures of off of one of the monitors. I realized it was changing screens and when I looked it had all sorts of interesting tidbits of information. I stood through the cycle and tried to capture all of the images. Some could be better so I will retry tomorrow.

The hotel delivered complimentary Quafe. I do not know if they did it the first day because we didn't have the room cleaned. They come with a cute card from CCP. The room was reserved through the Fanfest stuff. I was wondering about the case of Quafe I saw someone pushing the other day.

Speaking of the hotel, I learned last night that the heat is through the floor which is tiled with underfloor heating. My husband kept it so cold the first night that I figured there was no heat and I'd have to live like that forever, dying of the cold. However, when the heat turns on and the floor warms up its not bad at all. Death steps back out of the room and I can not have everything in my suitcase on.

The morning was another lovely hotel breakfast. My mystery melon from the other day was replaced by ripe pineapple. The little sausages are delicious. W…

I regretted not going to the Dust 514 Keynote when I learned that they officially announced what we all knew, that Dust 514 Planetary Conquest was coming to Molden Heath. I decided to correct my knowledge gap and go to the Dust 514 sessions that involved Planetary Conquest and see what I could learn.

I know very little about Dust and this is not about Dust. It is about what Dust will do to Non-Faction Warfare Low Sec. I want Dust to succeed but I am not personally interested in it. It is a first person shooter and all of the fascinating gameplay does not take away from the fact that its run around and shoot things in a first person view. The only time I am sucked into First Person views is exploration games like Skyrim and Fallout.

Anyway, I was there to hear about Molden Heath. I sat with Ueberlisk. I am pretty sure that we were the only Molden Heath residents there.

All of the temperate planets are going to become controllable They will be randomly split into 5-24 districts. These…

CCP had a closed World of Darkness review. They did not want video footage leaking out to the press when they are not ready for a release.

Number one: It will not be released next year.

Number two: I did not take any pictures or recordings of the lovely preview the gave us after asking us not to record it. All pictures are from the still shots that they showed as us their basic idea/demo of things. We were not asked to put our cameras or phones away at this time and many pictures were taken. These are all concept stills but they show the feel of the game which I think is important.

TL;DR: I think that they are making a beautiful and interesting game with potential but no world breaking secrets are here.

Onward into this. I'm a big fantasy fan. I am not a twilight fan. However, World of Darkness has potential in my mind if it has the same vicious sandbox thing that CCP has moved forward with Eve. They have to separate themselves from the cookie cutter box and the best way is to not …

I am separating out my travel ramblings from the Fanfest stuff. The Fanfest stuff should be labeled as to what Event I am writing about. This is just me musing over Iceland and general impressesions, dinner, books, and RMT.

Power is one of those things that you take for granted until you don't have it. My life is filled with electronics and watching my batteries die during the period that I was converterless was terrible. Also, my flat iron does not work here because it draws to much energy. My poor hair will slowly turn into its normal wild mass as I struggle to work with a blow dryer. By next tuesday they may classify me as a native creature.

The shower is also the entire bathroom. Or, if I exaggerate a bit it is most of the bathroom. The corner/third/square that is the shower has a slant and drain. There is a plastic half circle on a hinge that you use to stop the water from drenching everything. Maybe people here don't splash as much? I don't k…

This will hopefully be a part one of two. This was the presentation and some questions in one of the main halls. There is supposed to be a round table tomorrow that I will do everything in my power to attend. As this was the most interesting thing for me I'm writing about it first and in the most detail.

There will be a Dev blog with all of the slides out next week, we were told. The stream was also recorded and I assume it will be put up somewhere to be watched.

Crimwatch began with a brief overview of the old system and the reason for the changes. It is old news but always nice to hear. The groundwork was laid in inferno which was mostly back end changes. One thing mentioned was that Interdiction Sphere launching gate lock. It is currently working as intended and is not broken in any way. He knows that there was a period of time where it was broken and changed and rebroken so he made sure that its current state of working was as intended.

I woke up around 1800 local time. The view from the room is nice. It is on the third floor. The sound proofing from the hallway is terrible. People like to hang out and talk, very loudly.

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This place seems not to remember hours ago when it was making me trundle through slush covered streets and crying for lack of a menu. It is bright and sunny and not a hint of snow.

The first task was to find a power converter. That had been forgotten. The front desk gave directions to a bookstore as the best place to find one. Finding the bookstore was a simple enough event. It is not the place that I would go for a power converter but the proper 'place' for things is different everywhere. I'm terribly envious that there is a bookstore (or several since I have seen a few). They have all vanished from the area that I live at.

There is Eve stuff everywhere. There are businesses with Eve focused ads for d…